More Colorado pot is flowing to neighboring states, officials say

Marijuana is flowing into the black market and out of Colorado in greater quantities than ever before, law enforcement officials say.

It's going by car and by bus. It's being packed up and shipped through the mail. It's being found, in small amounts and large bundles, as far away as Illinois, New York and Florida.

Earlier this year, 42 pounds of high-grade, vacuum-sealed marijuana was flown into Atchison, Kan., in a small red-and-white airplane. Acting on a tip, a team of law enforcement officers pounced on the plane immediately after it landed, seized the marijuana and put four Colorado residents in handcuffs.

The movement of Colorado marijuana into neighboring states has scarcely escaped the attention of police in those states, who say they have started tracking it more closely and believe Colorado's legalization of pot will only increase the influx.

"It's already got a reputation in Oklahoma because of how strong it is," Mark Woodward, the spokesman for Oklahoma's Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, said of Colorado marijuana. "No question, the more access you have, the more demand you're going to have for this."

Advertisement

To be sure, cross-border marijuana trafficking has long occurred, and marijuana grown in Colorado for out-of-state distribution remains illegal under state law. Mason Tvert, one of the advocates behind marijuana legalization in Colorado, said the state's new laws will cut down on black-market demand within the state, allowing officials to focus on the out-of-state traffickers.

"It's still illegal," Tvert said. "Our government should be focusing its time on preventing illegal cultivation and sales."

It is also uncertain exactly how much pot is leaving the state's borders — or how much the activity has increased.

Seizure numbers are an imprecise measurement of activity, in part because law enforcement agencies and drug traffickers constantly change tactics in their cat-and-mouse game. Reporting seizure numbers to the Drug Enforcement Agency is voluntary. And investigators rely many times on interviews with suspects — who may be unreliable — in determining that the marijuana originated in Colorado.

"Right now, I don't think anyone knows how much marijuana is leaving Colorado," said Sam Kamin, a University of Denver law professor who has studied marijuana policy issues.

Still, Colorado pot is clearly moving into neighboring states.

The DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center reported that, for 2012, 3½ tons of Colorado marijuana that was destined for other states was seized by law enforcement agencies across the country. That's up more than 300 percent from 2009, when a little over three-quarters of a ton of Colorado marijuana was seized.

Likewise, U.S. postal inspectors have seen a jump in seizures of packages containing marijuana mailed in Colorado to other states — from 15 in 2010 to 209 through the first five months of 2013.

"We're seeing a substantial increase in domestic cannabis that originates in the Denver area over the last three or four years," said Kansas Highway Patrol Lt. B.K. Smith.

That's a problem for Colorado officials, and not just because it makes the neighbors angry.

But regulators and law enforcement officials in the state say stopping diversion will be difficult. Even with tightly regulated marijuana stores, there are simply too many ways for pot to flow into the black market and out of Colorado for officials to be able to halt the current flow entirely.

The incentives to illegal growers are clear: Marijuana that sells in the black market in Colorado for as little as $2,000 a pound can go for $4,000 a pound just across state lines and perhaps $6,000 a pound on the East Coast, said Denver police Sgt. Andrew Howard.

"It's simple market forces," said Howard, who is on the department's marijuana task force. "People (here) think it's legal. People think the cops don't care about it being unregulated, so let's take advantage of the system."

Diversion from marijuana stores has received the most attention from regulators, but that is perhaps the least likely source, experts say. Licenses for legal pot shops will be expensive and hard to get.

"I would be very surprised if people growing legally under a state system are also growing illegally for export," said Mark Kleiman, a professor at UCLA who was helped Washington state write its rules for recreational marijuana stores. "Those licenses are valuable."

There are still plenty of ways, though, for pot in Colorado to move across state lines. Medical marijuana patients, caregivers or people growing at home can move small amounts. Shoppers can buy up marijuana bit by bit at stores and then resell the whole sum in another state. And, perhaps most worrying for officials, black marketers can try to hide beneath Colorado's laws to run explicitly illegal operations.

Tom Allman, the sheriff of Mendocino County in California, long a hotbed of illicit marijuana growing, said Colorado should be prepared. He predicted the state's new marijuana laws would lead to more illegal growers trying their luck in the state.

"I think they just roll their dice," Allman said. "We have been told by growers they are leaving California and they're going to Colorado."

Tvert said it wouldn't make sense for black marketers to move to a state so concerned about marijuana regulation. But it's that possibility that most concerns Colorado Attorney General John Suthers.

With a good enough tracking system, the state may be able to stop marijuana from leaking out of commercial growing operations, Suthers said. Plugging all sources, though, in what could become the nation's cannabis heartland may prove impossible.

"Our legal system gives you a kind of cover," he said. "I think that's going to become the view: As far as marijuana is concerned, this is the Wild West."

John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/john_ingold

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.